Sticks and Stones

I've been blogging about the news a lot lately. Might as well keep up the trend!

Related Article: Source

Mark Twain was an amazing author who wrote two of the most controversial books; Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In their day, the satire and topics in them were controversial. Today, it's the liberal use of the word "nigger" that has many people up in arms.

I'm sorry to anyone offended by it, but the book should remain as it is. I don't see the purpose to altering such an amazing literary work because we are ashamed of our history. These words are not being used because the book is made to offend someone. They are not written in there because it's known to be wrong to say. Nigger is in that book because in 1885, that is what black people were often known as.

It was a mere 20 years after the civil war. While colored was probably slowly seeping into culture at that point as a more acceptable term, we were still adjusting to not being slave owners, and to black people being a part of the free population. It takes years for people to fully accept such monumental change, and in that time, people didn't have to.

Changing words in the book to "not offend people" is like trying to change our history, and hide things. We're supposed to be uncomfortable when learning about things we did that are now embarrassing. If we weren't, then we wouldn't have learned anything. And if we don't share the past in the best ways possible to teach about it, we are doomed to repeat it.

Let's look into the origins of the word a bit, to understand better why it really did start as just a word, and why it is the actions that make it something to be disgusted about, and not the word itself.

"The origin of the word "nigger" is in the Latin "niger," meaning "black." The word, as "niger," entered into Spanish and Portuguese. Early Modern French obtained it from Portuguese where it became "negre" and "negro," respectively. English acquired the word from French, which was manifested in earlier English variants, such as "negar," "neegar," "neger," and "niggor." "Neger" is a current word in both Dutch and German, as well as Scandinavian languages. " - Source

"In researching this story, I looked for the origins of 'nigger.' Some scholars say 'nigger' was derived from the Latin word for the color black which is spelled 'n-i-g-e-r.' Then I spoke with Professor Robin Lakoff. She's a sociolinguistics professor at the University of California's-Berkeley Campus.

She believes the word 'nigger' is a deliberate mispronounciation of the word 'negro.' That, she says, is why the word has so much negative power." -Source

"Etymologically nigger is a doublet with negro as they both ultimately derive from niger, the Latin word for "black". Note that it does not necessarily mean "a black person", just "black" the color. On the other hand, Africa's Niger river and the country of Nigeria were given those names because of the color of the people there. Nigger entered Middle English as neger, a form of the Old French negre, itself borrowed from the Spanish negro, "black"." -Source

"The modern word nigger is a variant of an older term, neger, pronounced with a long /ee/ sound, which is still in use in Caribbean dialect. It comes from the French nègre, in use to mean a black person since at least 1516, and ultimately from the Latin niger, meaning black. The word negro comes from the same Latin root, although the route negro took into English was via Spanish, not French. " -Source

So as we can see, the word "nigger" comes from Latin, and as Americans we bastardized the word to suit our needs. The word itself is a mispronunciation for the Latin word for black. It's not offensive in that sense. It's when you add the history behind it that we have a problem.

When Mark Twain wrote those books, much of that history was still being written. "Nigger" was still a commonly and openly accepted term, and probably was not as derogatory back then as it is now.

So now, by changing the verbiage of the books, we're essentially trying to re-write and change history. Why? Why not use it to teach instead? Why not teach the origins, and why it has become to mean something so different? Because let me tell you what, finding the origins of the word is no simple matter. I don't trust Wikipedia necessarily, so finding what I did took a bit of digging. But I'm always happier to be informed.

No, the books need to stay as they are, and people need to understand where the negativity comes from, and why it wasn't there yet at the time of writing. Because I firmly believe that it's only through learning both the good and the bad, that someone can understand properly why they should and shouldn't do something.

So rather than suppress it, we're better off to use the books to teach with, so that kids understand why they shouldn't use the word. And so that we can better understand the rich history our ancestors have left to us, for better or for worse.